Once a savior
by dontcancelhousever
Summary: Django isn't good with grief. He's much better with anger.


See I would love to slash Django, I really would. But I can't. It's perfect just the way it is. But my buddy asked for a fix-it. So here you go:

"I'm still angry with you." The wind was whispering through the Spanish moss. The oaks were moaning, heavy trunks aching with age. The grass was high. King Schultz's bushy eyebrows were lifted in warm irony. It was familiar. It was painful. He was leaning against the burl of a great oak, his gray coat incongruous to the hum of summer bugs. A rope swing was testing the air.

Django had been riding with Hilde when scratchiness had touched his throat. They had found a crevice in the white washed rocks to set up camp. The joint pain had increased, the chills jumping hard under his skin. He was the fastest gun in the south but as with most things, it was Hilde who had to be the strong one. He had slept when the fire was throwing sparks into the sand and the stars had been vaulting and tipping. Trying to escape. He laughed at the irony of those little white specks escaping a black sky. It looked somewhat like their last bounty.

Then he had fallen into darkness and woken here. The air was cloying and hot despite the breeze. He tried to take off his coat but his fingers bumbled.

" Let me."

Schultz was closer now. He smelt like leather and shoe polish.

" I meant it," Django said. " I'm angry at you. You goddamned us."

" You did just fine. Spectucular even. You kept your calm much more stolidly than I as a matter of fact."

" Why did it you do it huh? We could've come back if we had to. You getting killed didn't help D'Artagnon none."

Schultz was undoing Django's buttons from the bottom to the top. Django wanted to help but he couldn't move. Schultz glanced up at him and then back down, smiling. The german had always had this kind of easy intimacy, leaning into Django's face whenever he felt like it. Teaching him to read, sharing beans over a fire. That last time at Calvin Candie's table, sharing a private disgust before it all went to shitfire.

Schultz finished the buttons and pushed the coat off Django's shoulders. Django remembered him rocketing back, shredded like paper, pinioned on those books he'd so loved. Django thought he might be sick.

" Much better," Schultz said.

He did feel better.

" Take a seat, young Django. We have much to discuss."

The only seat was the swing. Django took it reluctantly, though he didn't know why. It kept him unbalanced and nauseated. The world tilted on its axis. Schultz went back to the tree. He sighed and toy with his moustache. Django wanted to bat his hand down. It was too flippant a gesture and Django was hot with frustration.

" You asked me why I sacrificed my life for the likes of the dead? Wasn't that why I did everything, Django? Widowmakers often die in such a way. "

" I think you couldn't handle being in the dark for once," Django snapped back, irate.

Schultz looked up at him, past the brim of his hat. He was so different from the man who had died in that big house. The man who had died consumed with wrath, knuckled down with fear. Hilde and Candie, the two great powers of the world had pulled Schultz apart. Django didn't know why he'd been spared.

" You underestimated Steven too. As I recall." The older man said, closing his eyes heavily.

" I watched a man die, who was within my power to save. And worse, I offered him hope. Can you imagine, if I had walked away that night, left you wondering what could have happened, had I taken that iron away?"

Django looked down at his feet. He had been wearing Calvin Candie's boots. Now he wasn't. His feet were bare and they were cold.

He looked up. They were in the snow bank where they had had to bunk down after a storm. That winter so long ago. The limbo between who he was and who he'd been. It felt like returning to adolescence, but his growing years had been without hope. That winter was all about hope. The bodies of some gang were piled next to an erect stick to mark their place. He was sitting on his bedroll under a pine. Schultz was pushed up against his side.

Django couldn't feel his face, he was so cold. It was like burning. Schultz slung an arm around his shoulder, an odd fit since he was a few inches shorter.

" Don't be proud" Schultz said in that low chiding voice, which he rarely ever used on Django.

Django let himself lean, he'd never thought of Schultz as small but he was. He suddenly felt unbearably tired. His face pounded hotly like he might cry.

" It's so much harder than it had to be. If you had just walked away."

" I was never leaving that house," Schultz said softly.

Something just occurred to Django.

" Youre dead."

Schultz chuckled.

" Yes, I am aware."

"Then why are you here?"

" You, young Django," Schultz said, looking up through the pine at the heavy snow fall, " are very ill. I expect people see many impossible things when they are ill."

Django remembered but it was too heavy. He settled his head against his partner's. His hair was soft. It had been under his palm too.

" I wish you hadn't died," Django whispered.

For a time now, he hadn't thought about it. Traveling with Hilde, teaching her to shoot, rekindling all of Doc's connections for work, he hadn't had time to stop and think. He would never see his friend again. He'd had friends before. But in his world, in the world of slavery, a friend wasn't a constant. They might be sold or hung or shot.

They might be whipped to death over some bread or run away. They might try to take you with them. They might try to talk to you about change. Fighting back. But eventually that all faded under a desire to survive, just you. You might suffer watching a friend die but you wouldn't offer them you as an exchange. It had been a rare thing, love. He and others had thought it could only be for Hilde, who was admittedly, a gem.

But Schultz, free from a life as property, had given his fondness freely. And in the case of self-preservation, Schultz had done the opposite of what people did. They could have died because of that noble gesture. Django was right to hold onto his anger but it wasn't what was making his chest heavy.

" If I had worn my hidden gun, you would have lived," he whispered it to the pines. To God. To Schultz.

Schultz shook his head slowly.

" No, no. None of that. It's over now. It's time to wake up. Your young lady is getting impatient. And soon your son will need you too."

Django tried to jump in surprise. But he felt like molasses had swamped him down and hardened.

" My son?"

"Mm," Schultz murmured. He was starting to smell like tobacco. " I should have allowed her to keep this knowledge close but she is reticent to tell you, as it would demand a change of circumstance for you both."

Django grumbled. He owed his vocabulary to Schultz but sometimes even he wished the man would get straight to the point.

" She afraid?"

" She doesn't wish to rob you of your new identity. I'm sure you'll remind her it is second to that of a husband."

"Course," Django said. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open, Schultz was getting less bony and hard. He was sinking straight into the heat of his shoulder.

" Will I ever see you again?'

Schultz looked down at him. This close his eyes merged into a single blue shape. Those eyes crinkled in mirth.

Django blinked.

Hilde looked down at him with her dark moist eyes. The cabin around them was dark; a sheriff was standing by the doctor in the doorway, smoking a pipe. He was trying to shrug some cake on the physician. Life goes on and on. Hilde's smoothed a wet cloth on his forehead. She kissed his cheek.

" You scared me, baby."

Baby. He smelled leather and shoe polish. He had a feeling Hilde wouldn't mind keeping the tradition of german names in the family.

Hope you could hear their voices alright, can't tell you how hard it is to try to mimic Tarantino. Also I kind of indulged my love for shortstoph, sorry. J


End file.
